what you have to tell will be different--vastly different from what
I know. If you are betraying nothing would you mind telling me his
story?"

"It is not a pleasant story," warned the younger man, "and on such a
night as this----"

"It may be that one can see more clearly into the depths of misfortune
and tragedy," interrupted the Missioner quietly.

A faint flush rose into David Raine's pale face. There was something of
nervous eagerness in the clasp of his fingers upon his knees.

"Of course, there is the woman," he said.

"Yes--of course--the woman."

"Sometimes I haven't been quite sure whether this man worshipped the
woman or the woman's beauty," David went on, with a strange glow in his
eyes. "He loved beauty. And this woman was beautiful, almost too
beautiful for the good of one's soul, I guess. And he must have loved
her, for when she went out of his life it was as if he had sunk into a
black pit out of which he could never rise. I have asked myself often if
he would have loved her if she had been less beautiful--even quite
plain, and I have answered myself as he answered that question, in the
affirmative. It was born in him to worship wherever he loved at all. Her
beauty made a certain sort of completeness for him. He treasured that.
He was proud of it. He counted himself the richest man in the world
because he possessed it. But deep under his worship of her beauty he
loved _her_. I am more and more sure of that, and I am equally sure
that time will prove it--that he will never rise again with his old hope
and faith out of that black pit into which he sank when he came face to
face with the realization that there were forces in life--in nature
perhaps, more potent than his love and his own strong will."

Father Roland nodded.

"I understand," he said, and he sank back farther in his corner by the
window, so that his face was shrouded a little in shadow. "This other
man loved a woman, too. And she was beautiful. He thought she was the
most beautiful thing in the world. It is great love that makes beauty."

"But this woman--my friend's wife--was so beautiful that even the eyes
of other women were fascinated by her. I have seen her when it seemed
she must have come fresh from the hands of angels; and at first, when my
friend was the happiest man in the world, he was fond of telling her
that it must have been the angels who put the colour in her face and the
wonderful golden fires in her shining hair. It